The Impact of Twitter on Journalism (Video) Marijuana dispenser machine company's stock gets really, really high, man Lesson from Petraeus CyberClusterFuck: Email isn't safe. Gallery of over 1000 beautiful vintage movie posters on the auction block Twinkies maker Hostess goes belly up Pornoscanner vendor accused of fraud, jailarity may ensue Neuroscience of the human brain while freestyle rapping Rabbit Ears! Meat-eaters lie and commit sex crimes, according to excellent new Indian textbook The Power of Sleep: PBS NewsHour on why we can't stop snoozing Hashima, the abandoned island Car does reverse donuts Child upset by Obama's election victory Nightmare: belly ring snags on pool drain Kill the Password Big Bang Theory "flash mob" surprise dance-number Mr. Shirtless The gentleman mugger Alex Balk's unrealized novel Thanksgiving: time to revisit classic Sarah Palin turkey-death video Bogus Lincoln $100 bill fails to impress checkout clerk Airship Ventures grounded by lack of funds Mobile office earns man a fine A Honey Boo Boo portrait made of thematically-appropriate trash Elite 4 to be DRM-free Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore: The perfect nerdish fantasy Rocket defense of Beersheva Sarasota homeless man arrested for charging phone Athanasius Kircher, a Man of Misconceptions - Exclusive excerpts The fabulous french fry and hash brown diet The Impact of Twitter on Journalism (Video)
By Mark Frauenfelder on Nov 16, 2012 12:13 pm Jeff Jarvis, the director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism, and others discuss the impact of Twitter on journalism.
Read in browser Marijuana dispenser machine company's stock gets really, really high, man
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 16, 2012 12:06 pm Medbox (MDBX), a firm that makes medical marijuana dispensing machines, says its stock "is getting way too high." Shares spiked 3,000% this week (from about $4 Monday to $215 Thursday), "prompting executives to try and dampen investor enthusiasm." The surge was caused by a MarketWatch story about how to invest in legalized marijuana.
Read in browser Lesson from Petraeus CyberClusterFuck: Email isn't safe.
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 16, 2012 12:01 pm Geoffrey Fowler and Evan Perez in the Wall Street Journal write about one practical (and, yes, obvious) takeaway from the Petraeus scandal: "Privacy protections for even the most sophisticated users of consumer-email services actually protect very little." Or, as Kurt Opsahl from the EFF puts it in the article, "If the director of central intelligence ...
Read in browser Gallery of over 1000 beautiful vintage movie posters on the auction block
By Mark Frauenfelder on Nov 16, 2012 11:55 am Heritage Auctions has over 1000 fabulous movie posters on the block. This 1933 King Kong poster is the star of the show and is valued at $80,000+. The auction has rarities from every genre including horror, science fiction, film noir, Western, Alfred Hitchcock, musicals, comedy and many more. Considered a visual triumph and one of ...
Read in browser Twinkies maker Hostess goes belly up
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 16, 2012 11:16 am Hostess Brands Inc, the bankrupt baker of Twinkies, Wonder Bread, Ho-Hos, and Raspberry Zingers, "has sought a U.S. court's permission to go out of business."
Read in browser Pornoscanner vendor accused of fraud, jailarity may ensue
By Cory Doctorow on Nov 16, 2012 11:14 am Rapiscan, makers of the naked-scanner technology used in many US airports, are in a lot of trouble. The TSA has accused them of falsifying their tests results on the software that supposedly protects flier privacy by rendering them as cartoon characters with suspicious blobs wherever the scanner's image-processor thinks they belong. If convicted, the execs ...
Read in browser Neuroscience of the human brain while freestyle rapping
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 16, 2012 11:10 am Using brain scans, scientists are trying to find how great freestyle rappers drop dope lines. Discovery News reports on a study conducted by researchers the voice, speech and language branch of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Here's the paper: "Neural Correlates of Lyrical ...
Read in browser Rabbit Ears!
By Jason Weisberger on Nov 16, 2012 11:08 am While looking for some way to add an interesting touch of forgotten tech to my living room, I remembered Rabbit Ears. Just a simple dipole antenna, rabbit ears could be beautiful! I'm looking to add something like this to my silly LCD flatpanel tv -- for show. I found them on TGL, where there is ...
Read in browser Meat-eaters lie and commit sex crimes, according to excellent new Indian textbook
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 16, 2012 11:07 am "The strongest argument that meat is not essential food is the fact that the Creator of this Universe did not include meat in the original diet for Adam and Eve. He gave them fruits, nuts and vegetables. Non-vegetarians easily cheat, tell lies, forget promises, they are dishonest and tell bad words, steal, fight and turn ...
Read in browser The Power of Sleep: PBS NewsHour on why we can't stop snoozing
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 16, 2012 10:38 am Miles O'Brien's report for PBS NewsHour this week about the neuroscience of sleep (and other forms of brain-rest, including meditation.)
Read in browser Hashima, the abandoned island
By Rob Beschizza on Nov 16, 2012 10:16 am Photo: Jordy Theiller The mysterious abandoned island featured as Silva's lair in Skyfall is a real place, Hashima. Once the world's most densely-populated company town, it's been in ruins for a generation. The island was populated from 1887 to 1974 as a coal mining facility. The island's most notable features are the abandoned and undisturbed ...
Read in browser Car does reverse donuts
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 16, 2012 10:15 am It's time to make the (reverse) donuts.
Read in browser Child upset by Obama's election victory
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 16, 2012 10:10 am Defeat hurts.
Read in browser Nightmare: belly ring snags on pool drain
By Rob Beschizza on Nov 16, 2012 10:09 am "The mom's navel ring got entangled on a drain in the zero-depth swimming pool, filled with just six inches of water. 'I laid down to stay warm in the water, on my belly, I couldn't get back up because I was stuck,' says the mom." — Tammy Vigil, KDVR
Read in browser Kill the Password
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 16, 2012 10:07 am "No matter how complex, no matter how unique, your passwords can no longer protect you," writes Mat Honan in Wired magazine this month. And he should know.
Read in browser Big Bang Theory "flash mob" surprise dance-number
By Cory Doctorow on Nov 16, 2012 09:59 am The cast and crew of
Big Bang Theory staged a surprise flash-mob choreographed dance production to "Call Me Maybe."
Read in browser Mr. Shirtless
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 16, 2012 09:58 am First published by the Seattle Times. You're welcome. David Heath at CPI met him some years back, and has a blog post about him here.
Read in browser The gentleman mugger
By Rob Beschizza on Nov 16, 2012 09:58 am A robber seized a man's wallet in Kansas, then realized his victim was a friend of his and gave him his stuff back. Adds reporter Kevin Murphy: "Although the victim went to police ... he did not think he could identify them in a suspect line-up."
Read in browser Alex Balk's unrealized novel
By Rob Beschizza on Nov 16, 2012 09:52 am The Awl founder muses on his idea for the ultimate pomo literary novel: "the book would be told solely through reviews written by its protagonist. There would never be a line of dialogue". But he forgets his achievements; this won the Booker Prize in 199A.
Read in browser Thanksgiving: time to revisit classic Sarah Palin turkey-death video
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 16, 2012 09:51 am Time to trot out a turkey classic.
Read in browser Bogus Lincoln $100 bill fails to impress checkout clerk
By Rob Beschizza on Nov 16, 2012 09:44 am A man in Rhode Island was either too dumb or too cheeky for his own good: the counterfeit bills he tried to pass at a local Target had Abraham Lincoln on the $100, popularly known as a Benjamin. [Sun Chronicle]
Read in browser Airship Ventures grounded by lack of funds
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 16, 2012 09:36 am Samuel Coniglio says, It is with a heavy heart that I announce that Airship Ventures has stopped operations. I got to fly on it with my wife, and it was an amazing experience. It is one of only three working Zepplins in the world! There is still a chance to save the company, and hopefully ...
Read in browser Mobile office earns man a fine
By Rob Beschizza on Nov 16, 2012 09:26 am Police in Saarland, Germany, pulled over a man for speeding. In his car, they discovered an unusually extensive mobile workplace: a computer set up for use from the driver's seat, a printer, a router, a wireless networking dongle, a dash-mounted navigation system and a mountain of other junk. He was fined for having "unsecured items" ...
Read in browser A Honey Boo Boo portrait made of thematically-appropriate trash
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 16, 2012 09:26 am Artist
Jason Mecier's Honey Boo Boo portrait is made from "25 lbs. of trash, recycling and found objects," and took over 50 hours to create.
Read in browser Elite 4 to be DRM-free
By Rob Beschizza on Nov 16, 2012 09:20 am After years of waiting and several false starts, the fourth game in the legendary Elite series of space-exploration games is underway. Elite: Dangerous, currently being kickstartered by David Braben, sounds a lot like the original: shoot, trade and upgrade in a vast, procedurally-generated universe packed with stuff to do. In the game, you will of ...
Read in browser Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore: The perfect nerdish fantasy
By Cory Doctorow on Nov 16, 2012 09:16 am Robin Sloan's Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore is one of those instant geek classics that gets right into the romance and magic of high-tech, a book akin to Cryptonomicon or Microserfs. It's the story of Clay Jannon, a broke ex-high-tech worker who gets a night-shift job in poky, weird bookstore whose highest shelves are stocked with ...
Read in browser Rocket defense of Beersheva
By Jason Weisberger on Nov 15, 2012 11:10 pm If I am to trust
Dennis Wilen's translation,
these are inbound Hamas rockets intercepted outside of Beersheva by Israel's 'Iron Dome' rocket defense system.
Read in browser Sarasota homeless man arrested for charging phone
By Jason Weisberger on Nov 15, 2012 08:33 pm The Herald-Tribune reports on the latest in Sarasota's long running war on the homeless, arresting a man for using a public charging station to charge a phone. "In 2006, Sarasota was called the "meanest city" in the nation by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty and the National Coalition for the Homeless..." (Thanks ...
Read in browser Athanasius Kircher, a Man of Misconceptions - Exclusive excerpts
By Mark Frauenfelder on Nov 15, 2012 07:18 pm Here are a few brief excerpts from A Man of Misconceptions: The Life of an Eccentric in an Age of Change, by John Glassie, published by Riverhead Books. Reprinted with permission. This is the vivid, unconventional story of Athanasius Kircher, the legendary seventeenth-century priest-scientist who was either a great genius or a colossal crackpot . ...
Read in browser The fabulous french fry and hash brown diet
By Mark Frauenfelder on Nov 15, 2012 06:25 pm Richard Nikoley of Free the Animal started eating fried potatoes earlier this week and has lost five pounds so far. This is the "magic" of potatoes. You can literally live off them, and some people have and do. Of course, you don't want to, nor do I, but it's a useful tool when you understand ...
Read in browser Meet SparkTruck, an “educational build-mobile” for the twenty-first century.
Dreamed up by a group of Stanford d.school students and funded through Kickstarter, SparkTruck is a mobile maker space currently traveling across the United States. At schools and summer camps and libraries around the country, the SparkTruck team offers workshops to help kids “find their inner maker” as they design and build projects like stamps, stop-motion animation clips, and “vibrobots.”
[video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmRKXqDwieY&feature=plcp]
This might seem all shiny and new. And it is—but only in part. What’s so striking (and exciting) about SparkTruck is the way it combines old and new. It does so in the tools it gets kids using, which range from pipe cleaners to laser cutters. It does so in its educational approach, which combines cutting-edge (get it?) STEM and design pedagogy with the fundamentals of an old-school shop class. And it does so in its method, which combines the iconic, century-old technology of the bookmobile with the hot new form of the maker space.
In doing so, SparkTruck joins a growing number of libraries which are combining time-tested principles (like equal access to information) with new technologies (like 3-D printers), putting in maker spaces and media production labs alongside bookshelves and meeting rooms. As I’ve argued over on bookmobility.org, these combinations make sense because reading and making actually have a lot in common. They’re both creative processes that take existing materials and combine them in new ways. Getting people engaged in those kinds of processes—through imaginative thinking, contemplation, hands-on problem-solving, and collaborative learning—is what both maker spaces and libraries are all about.
Taking that commitment on the road with scissors and hammers and 3-D printers and a great big bookmobile-like truck, SparkTruck serves as a laboratory for new approaches, as well as a reminder that trying new things doesn’t have to (and probably shouldn’t!) necessarily mean tossing old ones out.
After all, what would those vibrobots be without classically crafty pipe cleaners and tongue depressors? And what would a library be without the creative, participatory, straight-up awesome experience of reading?
SparkTruck schedule [sparktruck.org]
How to arrange a visit from SparkTruck [sparktruck.org]
SparkTruck YouTube channel [youtube.com]
Signature: --Derek Attig, bookmobility.org
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